Whittard – Milk Oolong
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After the whirlwind of Bird & Blend advent teas this month, we are back to regular tea reviews. Obviously Christmas isn’t OVER over in the real world. It’s Christmas Bank Holiday here in the UK. And if one were the unfortunate gift recipient in The 12 Days Of Christmas, one would still only be in possession of a quite manageable number of birds. (Three French hens, two turtle doves and a partridge in a pear tree.)
But here at Tea Fancier Towers, we’re back to business as usual. Whittard’s Milk Oolong is my first ever Milk Oolong. My research informs me that Milk Oolong has nothing to do with milk. (Apparently, there are persistent rumours that milk oolong plants are grown in milk or that the leaves are steeped in milk before drying but these are all nonsense.)
Milk oolong is more property known as Jin Xuan, (which translates as Golden Daylily) and comes from Taiwan. This Whittard version uses tea leaves grown in the country’s Nantou region.
However, it may not have been the best choice for my first Milk Oolong because it cheerfully admits to using added flavourings. At least it does on the tea packet. There is no mention of flavourings on Whittard’s website so perhaps they’ve changed it since I bought this tea earlier this year.
This tea does taste incredibly milky. Its taste is somewhere between condensed milk and those Chinese White Rabbit milk candies. It’s really rather delicious. The tea comes in little dried pellets and – as seems usual for these sorts of things – expands into massive great leaves in a way that seems to defy the laws of physics.
I have no idea how much of the creaminess comes from the tea itself and how much is down to the additional flavouring. A true Jin Xuan owes its creaminess to its cultivar and terroir.
So, while I really enjoyed Whittard Milk Oolong and will happily polish off the rest of it, I am going to be more selective with my next milk Oolong purchase and ensure that I get an unflavoured naked one.
Today’s Featured Book is Milk Of Paradise: The History of Opium by Lucy Inglis. While the book doesn’t have anything about Milk Oolong in it, it does contain a lot of information about the tea trade. The history of tea and the history of opium are very closely linked.
